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Second Life Wiki:Merge/Second Life Through The Ages
Planning Reportedly, this all started when Philip was in the shower. He envisioned this vast green, continuous landscape, distributed across multiple servers... and went on to build it. Andrew Linden recently said in the forums that LL was started as a hardware company geared towards the research and development of haptics. They needed a virtual world to go with their hardware, and so they started building what became LindenWorld and later Second Life. This hardware is also said to still exist, with the nickname "The Rig", sitting in a box somewhere in Linden Lab offices, it has been stated that the code used to interface with "The Rig" was most likely removed recently in 2005 around 1.6. Development Some early experiments are said to have been: - Simple creation of cubes on a flat terrain - Sophisticated water simulation, where you dropped an object on water and waves spread across sims. This particular effect was dropped since communicating information about water ripples took too much bandwidth. Alpha Alpha started on March 2002, under the name Linden World. The first players were Steller Sunshine and Paul Zeeman. Other notable Alpha members include Mac Beach, Flyk Escher, BuhBuhCuh Fairchild and bUTTONpUSHER Jones. Interesting bits about Alpha: * Snakes and birds roamed the land, feeding on abandoned objects. * You could shoot trees, watch them catch fire, and spread it to other trees. * You could "Edit" other people's avatars, and move them around. Steller apparently had lots of fun throwing Mac around in the early days. :) * No economy or currency. * Sims had no name. At first there were only 6 of them, but it grew to 9. * Attachments could not be scripted. * For land there was no concept of parcels owned by individuals, all land was globaly shared, which made the world like one giant sandbox. Beta Closed beta began on November 2002, with public beta opening on April 2003. Start of public beta: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/30/2342221 Beta brought us our first economic system, which was an attempt to control resource usage by charging for object creation. It cost L$10 per prim to rez an object (this includes attaching objects), and while initially a flat fee of L$3 per prim was charged to keep an object in-world, later a much more complex system was devised, calculating taxes based on each prim's volume and also its altitude. An extra tax was imposed on Light objects, starting at $5 per prim. Sometime during closed beta this PDF "Second Life Starter Guide" was written on 3/19/03. This PDF gives users a nice guide through starting Second Life, including information on features and what to expect. 1.0 1.0 was more or less the same as late beta, except that it had a different login screen. It was pretty much just a version number change that was implemented on the same day that SL went live in 6/03. A PDF entitled simply Second Life Reference came out around the same time with a date of 06/20/03 (which is also the release date of Version 0.9.1). The PDF was possibly the most detailed documentation of Second Life with a stunning 102 pages. The reference covers practicly every interface element that was in SL at the time and also includes many screenshots of the classic green interface as seen in the image below. For a time this reference along with a few others were on the SL website until they became obviously dated. Official launch: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/23/235244 Release Notes: Version 1.0.0 Images: 1.1 1.1 brought a slightly revised economy that aimed to stifle tax evasion. This caused a lot of drama, namely the death of Americana. There were major graphical changes, like a new terrain texture, animated hair/clothes, bump mapping and shiny Non-physical object motion became damped by default and they also introduced a new particle system and vehicle API. Release Notes: Version 1.1.0 Images: 1.2 Version 1.2 brought huge changes to the world, resulting in a complete social reorganization. Some say that after 1.2 it was "all about the money". 1.2 also gave a major directional change to SL, having a major impact on the way economy would develop. Outline of Changes in 1.2: * Taxes were done away with and replaced by new Land model. * Land was taxed in a higher manner, residents were given the option to pay extremely high L$ rates per month, or in "lesser" cost USD payments. * Prims were divided between land owners based on parcel size (eliminating "prim hogs"). * Improved interface and the ability to change its color via colors.ini. * Scripters given the ability to create dialogs via llDialog function. Related Links: 1.2 - More detailed account of 1.2 and the changes it brought. Old 1.2 FAQ: "Getting To Know v1.2" http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/27/2048246 Release Notes: Version 1.2 Images: 1.3 1.3 allowed scripts to communicate with the outside world, bringing incoming email and XML-RPC functions. Release Notes: Version 1.3 1.4 Life in SL took a dramatic turn for the best, as custom animations for avatar bodies were introduced, which opened a lot of doors to social interaction through creative expression. HTTP streaming also allowed everyone to play music on their land, leading to an explosion of clubs that annoyed most of the older residents. Video: A more exciting, animated you PDF: 1.4 Preview Guide - This PDF was released along with the preview for 1.4 and helped get residents acquainted with the new 1.4 features. Release Notes: Version 1.4 1.5 This was mainly a bugfix/overhaul version. A number of server-side changes were implemented to support changes in 1.6 and possibly 1.7. Ironically, 1.5 was one of the most bug-filled releases of SL, having been rushed to release with too little time for Previewing and bug-testing. Release Notes: Version 1.5 1.6 When Linden Lab launched this version, it featured streaming video, chat bubbles, and a redesigned interface for object construction along with a large number of new features and bugfixes. Release Notes: Version 1.6 1.7 1.7 was supposed to bring us Havok 2 and web browser based on mozilla technology. However it was confirmed that this will be held back for a future version. However 1.7 brings new attachment points called 'HUDs'. When objects are attached on HUD points, only the owner of the object will be able to see the objects. Also various new functions and a new script scheduler (script lag will now only lag other scripts, but have no impact on the renderer). The statistics were also reviewed (all sims run now at 45 FPS, like the physics engine) active objects are properly counted, and a new statistic has been provided to measure script performance. After several hiccups and almost 10 days of problems, the new texture loading scheme was finally stabilized. Unloaded textures show up as grey with white edges, thus helping people to see the volumetry (and avoid bumping into buildings) before textures load completely. The Map is now rendered with the new 2.0 renderer. Allowing residents to see the grid from a "birds eye view", with colors and textures of builds visible. Later, the LindeX — the Linden Currency Exchange, a way to buy/sell L$ with US$ — was introduced as a "replacement" of third-party sites (namely Gaming Open Market). Your account shows now how much L$ and US$ you have, and you can pay your mothly fees directly with US$ from LindeX transactions. Release Notes: Version 1.7 1.8 1.8 was the child of the new development model of LL. Instead of clumping lots of features and bug fixes on major releases, 1.8 only had two new features: one major, (re-)implementation of point-to-point teleporting (as opposed to teleporting to the nearest hub); and one minor, more realistic "water rippling effects", with proper sun/moon reflection, refraction of immersed objects and avatars, and nice-looking natural waves. Also a few minor yet much needed LSL functions for land control and mapping/travel. Havok 2, in-world HTML, better inter-object communication, better XML-RPC communication to the outside world were all postponed to a later date. From this point on, Linden Lab will not announce new features and their timeline. According to the Project Managers at LL, "new features will be introduced when they are ready". Google Video: Glimpse Inside a Metaverse: The Virtual World of Second Life, 3/1/06 1.9 Currently scheduled to enter preview testing, it is unknown what features 1.9 might bring. Recently, Ben Linden posted an entry on his blog demonstrating flexible primitives. Babbage Linden reports that scripting based on Mono is almost functional and will be integrated with the remaining code — but there are no guarantees if this will happen soon, or in a forthcoming version. There's also a Linux client in the works, scheduled to enter alpha testing very soon. 2.0 It will feature a dramatic improvement to the graphics engine, with greatly increased draw distances and more realistic lighting. Also planned for either 2.0 are a new scripting engine based on Mono (open source .NET) and a multithreaded client - meaning that low framerates will not cause network latency and vice versa. First images of the 2.0 renderer were shown in late 2004 (where?). They seem to have "millions of prims", visible across many hundreds of meters.